The present disclosure relates to verification of computerized systems, in general, and to post-silicon testing of distributed computerized devices, in particular.
Computerized devices control almost every aspect of our life—from writing documents to controlling traffic lights. However, computerized devices are bug-prone, and thus require a testing phase in which the bugs should be discovered. The testing phase is considered one of the most difficult tasks in designing a computerized device. The cost of a bug may be enormous, as its consequences may be disastrous. For example, a bug may cause the injury of a person relying on the designated functionality of the computerized device. Additionally, a bug in hardware or firmware may be expensive to fix, as patching it requires call-back of the computerized device. Hence, many developers of computerized devices invest a significant portion, such as 70%, of the development cycle to discover erroneous functionalities of the computerized device.
The target computerized system may be a processor, a microprocessor, an electronic circuit, an integrated circuit, a chipset, a computerized device comprising a processor or the like. The target computerized system may comprise multiple processing entities, such as cores, threads or the like. The present disclosure refers to a processing entity of the target computerized system as a “processor”.
Some of the testing of the target computerized system may be performed in a post-silicon stage. The post-silicon stage may refer to a stage after the target computerized system has been fabricated. In the present disclosure, fabricated target computerized system may be referred to as a circuit or as a silicon. For example, the post-silicon stage may be after the target computerized system is produced in accordance with a description provided by a descriptive language. It will be noted that the circuit may be different than a finalized product, such as for example comprising only a chip without a casing, being assembled manually, being only partially assembled and the like.